colored-traceback 0.4.2

Automatically color uncaught exception tracebacks

Automatically color Python’s uncaught exception tracebacks.

This one’s for anybody who’s ever struggled to read python’s stacktraces on the terminal. Something about the two-lines-per-frame approach really just makes them tough to scan visually.

Compare this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./workflowy.py", line 525, in <module>
    main()
  File "./workflowy.py", line 37, in main
    projects = cli.load_json(args, input_is_pipe)
  File "./workflowy.py", line 153, in load_json
    return json.load(sys.stdin)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 290, in load
    **kw)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 338, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 365, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 383, in raw_decode
    raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

To this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./workflowy.py", line 525, in <module>
    main()
  File "./workflowy.py", line 37, in main
    projects = cli.load_json(args, input_is_pipe)
  File "./workflowy.py", line 153, in load_json
    return json.load(sys.stdin)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 290, in load
    **kw)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 338, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 365, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 383, in raw_decode
    raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

Installation

Through pip:

pip install colored-traceback

Or directly:

git clone http://www.github.com/staticshock/colored-traceback.py
cd colored-traceback.py
pip install .

On Windows, which has no real support for ANSI escape sequences, this will also install colorama.

Usage

Colored Traceback can be executed as a module:

python -m colored_traceback somefile.py

Colored Traceback also works well within a script or even directly in the interpreter REPL. Standard usage will color the output, unless it’s being redirected to a pipe:

import colored_traceback
colored_traceback.add_hook()

If want to retain color even when stderr is being piped, tack on an always=True argument:

import colored_traceback
colored_traceback.add_hook(always=True)

There are also a couple of convenience imports, which get the footprint down to one line:

# Same as add_hook()
import colored_traceback.auto

# Same as add_hook(always=True)
import colored_traceback.always

It goes without saying that you might want to catch ImportError, making the presence of the package optional:

try:
    import colored_traceback.auto
except ImportError:
    pass